Source Description

The collection of Hamburg’s
Research Centre for
Contemporary HistoryForschungsstelle für
Zeitgeschichte contains numerous examples
of antisemitic poster
stamps printed from 1919 to 1922 by the large organization German Nationalist Protection and
Defiance Federation(DSTB)Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. They were an expression of a new strategy of street agitation utilizing
mass communication media such as stamps, broadsheets, and flyers. One of their
creators was (DSTB) chief executive Alfred Roth. In the first
six months of 1920 alone, (DSTB) local chapters and their supporters distributed more than
two million flyers nationwide and pasted 4.4 million poster stamps. These were
produced in Hamburg and were mostly rectangular in shape (their usual size
was 5 x 3-4 cm). They attracted attention by their use of color and graphic
elements. The poster stamps appeared – often pasted anonymously – on street
lamps, advertising columns, at train stations or on shop windows as well as
stuck onto envelopes. Their broad spectrum of anti-Jewish messages appealed to
different target groups within German society. The beige-colored poster stamp
quotes a polemical remark by reformer
Martin Luther in order
to reach the Protestant milieu. The stamp reading “A fortune of 60 billion…”
attacks the workers’ parties for supposedly protecting Jewish bankers from
nationalization. The red stamp reading “Jews and agents of Jewry [Judentzer]…” was meant to warn the national
bourgeoisie against voting for democratic and socialist parties while the blue
stamp employs a militant phrase emphasizing the dichotomy of “Germanness” and
Judaism in order to warn of the international enemy already in the
country.